So I'm just going to address both of these comments here: If you poll 100 people on what they think about X, but 90 million people use X, you're not getting anything close to "representative" numbers, especially if you stick to your bubble, in this case, steam. Now, if you can provide an exact percentage of the total player base that is using steam, you come closer to relevance, but then, since steam isn't required to play NW, how many are doing the "review bomb" thing? You know, logging in w/out steam so that they can say "I quit", meanwhile, they're sitting in PE 5 days later, still "quitting"? Yep, I don't trust steam:
Vanilla Skyrim review bombed for the Creation Club, and you can't even use the Creation Club with that version. No consequences.
Valve charging you for updating your credit card's expiration date, which isn't anecdotal, it happened to me. I wonder, what would have happened to my account if I hadn't had the dollar in the bank when they charged it? Immediate suspension, causing me to have to jump through however many hoops because they can't see that the only thing that changed on a card was the expiration date and the security code? On the same day, I updated the same card on several other platforms, and they didn't feel the need to charge the card for it. If that were to happen today, for example, it wouldn't clear, I'm disabled, and my bills are even with my income, so sometimes, there's no money left in the bank at the end of the month. If my bank went ahead and paid it, it would cost me 35 bucks for the overdraft, all just to update my payment information? So yeah, I don't trust steam, it was only installed because I wanted to play the Sword Coast game with some friends, so I had to install steam, since it was required.
This gets back to my other point: IF I were connecting to NW through steam prior to this, I wouldn't be playing any more, according to steam. The fact that this can happen means that the platform isn't worth the time to look at for game health, too many reasons why there might be a drop off, and it's especially worthless when steam isn't the only way to play.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
So I'm just going to address both of these comments here: If you poll 100 people on what they think about X, but 90 million people use X, you're not getting anything close to "representative" numbers, especially if you stick to your bubble, in this case, steam. Now, if you can provide an exact percentage of the total player base that is using steam, you come closer to relevance, but then, since steam isn't required to play NW, how many are doing the "review bomb" thing? You know, logging in w/out steam so that they can say "I quit", meanwhile, they're sitting in PE 5 days later, still "quitting"? Yep, I don't trust steam:
Vanilla Skyrim review bombed for the Creation Club, and you can't even use the Creation Club with that version. No consequences.
Valve charging you for updating your credit card's expiration date, which isn't anecdotal, it happened to me. I wonder, what would have happened to my account if I hadn't had the dollar in the bank when they charged it? Immediate suspension, causing me to have to jump through however many hoops because they can't see that the only thing that changed on a card was the expiration date and the security code? On the same day, I updated the same card on several other platforms, and they didn't feel the need to charge the card for it. If that were to happen today, for example, it wouldn't clear, I'm disabled, and my bills are even with my income, so sometimes, there's no money left in the bank at the end of the month. If my bank went ahead and paid it, it would cost me 35 bucks for the overdraft, all just to update my payment information? So yeah, I don't trust steam, it was only installed because I wanted to play the Sword Coast game with some friends, so I had to install steam, since it was required.
This gets back to my other point: IF I were connecting to NW through steam prior to this, I wouldn't be playing any more, according to steam. The fact that this can happen means that the platform isn't worth the time to look at for game health, too many reasons why there might be a drop off, and it's especially worthless when steam isn't the only way to play.
I agree with you but since I can not find numbers anywhere else, since cryptic likes to keep it a secret. People can only use information available to them to come to conclusions. I am sure if the numbers showed really good things cryptic would share the information as it would be used as a reason why new people should join.... It is what it is but when companies do now share much information people can only use the little they can find to make conclusions. Also the numbers also do not tell much about who is actually playing and who is just basically trolling around protectors enclave spouting nonsense in zone chat rather than playing.
So yeah steam does not exactly paint an accurate picture I do not use it for neverwinter or any mmo for that matter but it is still bascially the only information out there we have access to that shows any sort of players online at any time info.
So I'm just going to address both of these comments here: If you poll 100 people on what they think about X, but 90 million people use X, you're not getting anything close to "representative" numbers, especially if you stick to your bubble, in this case, steam. Now, if you can provide an exact percentage of the total player base that is using steam, you come closer to relevance, but then, since steam isn't required to play NW, how many are doing the "review bomb" thing? You know, logging in w/out steam so that they can say "I quit", meanwhile, they're sitting in PE 5 days later, still "quitting"? Yep, I don't trust steam:
Vanilla Skyrim review bombed for the Creation Club, and you can't even use the Creation Club with that version. No consequences.
Valve charging you for updating your credit card's expiration date, which isn't anecdotal, it happened to me. I wonder, what would have happened to my account if I hadn't had the dollar in the bank when they charged it? Immediate suspension, causing me to have to jump through however many hoops because they can't see that the only thing that changed on a card was the expiration date and the security code? On the same day, I updated the same card on several other platforms, and they didn't feel the need to charge the card for it. If that were to happen today, for example, it wouldn't clear, I'm disabled, and my bills are even with my income, so sometimes, there's no money left in the bank at the end of the month. If my bank went ahead and paid it, it would cost me 35 bucks for the overdraft, all just to update my payment information? So yeah, I don't trust steam, it was only installed because I wanted to play the Sword Coast game with some friends, so I had to install steam, since it was required.
This gets back to my other point: IF I were connecting to NW through steam prior to this, I wouldn't be playing any more, according to steam. The fact that this can happen means that the platform isn't worth the time to look at for game health, too many reasons why there might be a drop off, and it's especially worthless when steam isn't the only way to play.
I agree with you but since I can not find numbers anywhere else, since cryptic likes to keep it a secret. People can only use information available to them to come to conclusions. I am sure if the numbers showed really good things cryptic would share the information as it would be used as a reason why new people should join.... It is what it is but when companies do now share much information people can only use the little they can find to make conclusions. Also the numbers also do not tell much about who is actually playing and who is just basically trolling around protectors enclave spouting nonsense in zone chat rather than playing.
So yeah steam does not exactly paint an accurate picture I do not use it for neverwinter or any mmo for that matter but it is still bascially the only information out there we have access to that shows any sort of players online at any time info.
That's fine, so long as it's understood as being impossible to determine how relevant it is. My own experiences with "but steam charts say" is to claim that a game is dead/dying as definitive proof.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
July 2015 2,312.2 -245.1 -9.59% 3,639 June 2015 2,557.4 -348.4 -11.99% 4,285 May 2015 2,905.7 -786.7 -21.31% 5,079 April 2015 3,692.4 +392.8 +11.91% 6,324 March 2015 3,299.6 -150.8 -4.37% 5,921
this (above) is what mod 6 looked like on steam. march hasn't hit yet. April it hits. may they've lost nearly a quarter of their players by three months out it's about 40ish percent maybe a bit more they've lost. but their average daily player count was way above what it is now even at the low.
here is our recent period starting with teh announcement of mod 16 (it was pretty stable behind this at 2200 ish daily average players the demoralizing remembrance of mod 6 has caused people to preemptively leave. it will be interesting to follow this over the next four months lol
Last 30 Days 1,876.0 -260.9 -12.21% 3,452 March 2019 2,136.9 +51.4 +2.46% 3,917 February 2019 2,085.5 -152.0 -6.79% 3,684 January 2019 2,237.5 +1.5 +0.07% 3,907
so from mod 6 it was really active for the first couple weeks. it's how quickly it drops off that will be interesting (and unless some serious fixing happens soon it will. )
So a percentage of the people that actually use the platform hasn't logged in as of the time these stats were pulled. I wonder, if the curve had gone the other way, would we be discussing it, or is it only because it supports the narrative that a "majority of players have quit"? The in game reality seems to run a lot more towards "a majority of people are spending their time in PE complaining about the update". I also wonder how fast the OP will be calling for a lock if the number raises up in an hour or so, after people get home from work/school/what have you?
I'm sticking with my opinion on Steam: It's an easily manipulated tool. I don't buy any PC games that require Steam to play, despite having a Steam account. The only reason I say it has a 1/2 step advantage over MetaCritic is that there you at least have to own the game to leave a review, which can easily be manipulated if someone gets mad, per my example of the review bomb of vanilla Skyrim after the Creation Club came out. Valve is complicit in that: How many bans did they hand out?
You can stick your head in the sand but it won't make the problem go away. This mod is like mod 6. They are shedding players left and right. Steam is very valid for getting an idea for the change in player population. You can't get the actual numbers, but i'm confident the % change is accurate.
12 hours later, the trend indicated in the OP had been reversed. So if the intent of the OP was to show the game is dying, does the opposite then apply?
For one thing, a NW player going through steam could have had their account banned for activity in another game, or on the site, and can't access it. Way too many possible variables to say "See???" one way or the other.
it needs longer for the numbers to show the trend.
I log in via steam and have never had a problem.
Regardless we won't know about the effect Mod 16 is having on the population for weeks or months.
It's actually not "putting my head in the sand". What percentage of the player base uses steam to connect? Is it 80%, or 8%? Higher? Lower? If it's less than 10%, then the numbers are meaningless no matter how long we wait. I personally quit using steam for anything, meaning some of my purchased games are now unplayable, since they require steam to play. My issues were with how Valve handled my credit cards. So if I were using steam to connect to NW, I'd no longer be playing, according to steam. As I said, way too many variables to make any datasets that aren't based on games that require steam to access them, and even then, as a platform, it has too many variables to say "this game sucks because look at this chart". Some of the data is going to be corrupted due to issues such as my own, making the data useless.
This has nothing to do with you using steam.
Just look at the numbers going back to beta. You can see the steep dropoff just before they merged all the servers. You can see the steep dropoff right after mod6. These are known periods of player loss.
We might not know the actual player population, but you get a very accurate trend. One thing that steam probably does better is filter out the bots. I highly doubt any of the bots use steam.
I gave the game some time off to get debugged and started playing on Friday just to get interrupted by Emergency Maintenance that night... oh well.
Here are my final findings about the numbers on Steam Charts using them as a focus group. Star Trek is being used a baseline. The baseline removes the growth of Star Trek from the growth of Neverwinter. For example; both games show a loss on Friday, the loss of population could have been due to outside factors. Subtracting the loss and gain of STO serves as a control group. This is designed to minimize the effects of variables other than the independent variable. By the end of the week, NW still has much higher population than the week before.
Date
ST Online
% changed
NW Online
% changed
Baseline Growth
21 April
2105
3127
22 April
1943
-7.70%
2812
-10.07%
-2.38%
23 April
1719
-11.53%
4464
58.75%
70.28%
24 April
1750
1.80%
3598
-19.40%
-21.20%
25 April
1950
11.43%
3420
-4.95%
-16.38%
26 April
1876
-3.79%
3279
-4.12%
-0.33%
27 April
2130
13.54%
3776
15.16%
1.62%
My personal opinion is; One can still argue the point I made earlier, about the average population at a house fire being much higher. Being "present" doesn't negate the fact that until the module is fixed, people won't and cannot play the game.
Comments
Vanilla Skyrim review bombed for the Creation Club, and you can't even use the Creation Club with that version. No consequences.
Valve charging you for updating your credit card's expiration date, which isn't anecdotal, it happened to me. I wonder, what would have happened to my account if I hadn't had the dollar in the bank when they charged it? Immediate suspension, causing me to have to jump through however many hoops because they can't see that the only thing that changed on a card was the expiration date and the security code? On the same day, I updated the same card on several other platforms, and they didn't feel the need to charge the card for it. If that were to happen today, for example, it wouldn't clear, I'm disabled, and my bills are even with my income, so sometimes, there's no money left in the bank at the end of the month. If my bank went ahead and paid it, it would cost me 35 bucks for the overdraft, all just to update my payment information? So yeah, I don't trust steam, it was only installed because I wanted to play the Sword Coast game with some friends, so I had to install steam, since it was required.
This gets back to my other point: IF I were connecting to NW through steam prior to this, I wouldn't be playing any more, according to steam. The fact that this can happen means that the platform isn't worth the time to look at for game health, too many reasons why there might be a drop off, and it's especially worthless when steam isn't the only way to play.
So yeah steam does not exactly paint an accurate picture I do not use it for neverwinter or any mmo for that matter but it is still bascially the only information out there we have access to that shows any sort of players online at any time info.
Just look at the numbers going back to beta. You can see the steep dropoff just before they merged all the servers. You can see the steep dropoff right after mod6. These are known periods of player loss.
We might not know the actual player population, but you get a very accurate trend. One thing that steam probably does better is filter out the bots. I highly doubt any of the bots use steam.
Here are my final findings about the numbers on Steam Charts using them as a focus group. Star Trek is being used a baseline. The baseline removes the growth of Star Trek from the growth of Neverwinter. For example; both games show a loss on Friday, the loss of population could have been due to outside factors. Subtracting the loss and gain of STO serves as a control group. This is designed to minimize the effects of variables other than the independent variable. By the end of the week, NW still has much higher population than the week before.
My personal opinion is; One can still argue the point I made earlier, about the average population at a house fire being much higher. Being "present" doesn't negate the fact that until the module is fixed, people won't and cannot play the game.